I just love how AI is constantly doing things that would get real employees fired, and people keep using it.

Microsoft genuinely believes they can make you pay for additional ms office licenses for the robots that they also will sell you to use That is why they are pushing copilot so hard, they see a future where you pay them for their software to use their other software. I don't reckon it'll happen.

#3157 A helpful tutorial

Truly a time of unprecedented abundance, so long as one does not need a...<checks notes>....place to live in.

“not getting into pointless arguments on the internet is an act of revolution”

I was wondering if someone would have already discussed the concepts in No Silver Bullet vs AI development, of course they have. For fans, the distinction between essential and accidental complexity is key, and software living mostly in maintenance not build. ian-cooper.writeas.com/is-ai-a-silv...

As a software architect, psychology is one of my super powers for this reason. We live in a world where the people building some of the most influential tools of thought are the very same people who refuse to acknowledge the difficulty of the problem or hold the human mind in sufficient reverence

There are two kinds of software - the kind everyone hates, and the kind no-one uses.

Finished rustlings. Rust is such an opinionated language. It's like a type checker and the most opinionated developer you know implemented as a compiler.

LocalSend is so good. Your devices should always be able to talk like that if it's on your network! And it's so quick when you don't have to shuffle stuff onto an internet service! Anyway RMS was right all along.

Now realising I have gigabytes of photos in Google photos and I don't like it. 🥲

my algorithm don't my algorithm don't my algorithm don't want none unless you got O(log n)

The AI industry wants us to believe AI superintelligence is the real threat from generative AI. But that narrative was crafted to distract from the many ways genAI is being used to tear our societies apart, as we saw this week when a deepfake video rocked the Irish election. It must be reined in.

Finding today the woeful state of keeping a digital photo collection. Apparently you can't in any way sync your Google photos to a physical drive you own any more. That's crap. Personal computing has been totally taken over by online services and I hate it.

The most extraordinary claim I am seeing routinely being presented without evidence is that AI is "improving exponentially" Sorry, the last few years have seen things get a little better, but more expensive. That's not exponential improvement.

The hard part of solving a problem is the thinking. Definitely not writing down the solution.

Got back to working through rustlings and realised I paused in 2024! It felt like I'd just lost track a month or so ago. It's a hard ask to learn new stuff when you're spending most of your time working on a less fancy stack that everything important hinges on!

After 25 years away I'm going to try having a Linux primary desktop again. Mainly because of how I now feel about Microsoft and Apple. And of course I've been using Linux for servers the whole time. So far it's going well but I'm way out of touch on distros and I don't think FVWM is still good!

Someone on linkedin asked "what problem are you solving" with research. The problem of joy man. the problem of I like to know how things work. The problem of we have to tell the stories about all this or we'll go mad, won't we? The problem of someone needs to feel heard. Haven't you felt it??

Torn between "learning popular new technology is generally good for a tech person" and also "applications of this technology seem much more limited than the promise" But we've been here before. Most nosql dbs were worse than relational in use, most big data projects did not deliver on promises.

For the avoidance of doubt, this is how the inventor of "vibe coding" actually writes code. Can we all stop pretending now?

You can't logic your way out of being burnt out. Unless you're me. Who should be able to do it and it's a personal failing that I can't

Hot Water Balloon xkcd.com/3153/

Sitting on a wet bus seat is one of the worst surprises I reckon.

Get specific about what AI is doing for you. Look at what you do and how much time it saves. If you're like me you might be initially impressed at seeing all the stuff spool out of it. But was that where your time was going? Are you getting more done? Or is it just a neat trick?

Me two weeks ago www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

So weird that anyone would say different, but... Computers can't be sad. Computers can't be stressed. Computers cannot lie. Computers execute programs, they do not have human agency, emotions, or rights. They are tools, not friends or colleagues.

The People vs Robodebt is a really important story and I really don't feel that justice has been adequately done for the level of misery that was inflicted on so many people. Reminds me a bit of the UK post office scandal.

open.substack.com/pub/houseofm... Wrote about the radical act of returning to one's body in a digital age designed to detach us from them.

Wow we should base our entire economy on this technology

I wanted to fill in a really mean feedback form to Microsoft... I was almost feeling bad about being mean. But I couldn't submit it because their form didn't work correctly on my phone. No, I would not recommend office 365 to anyone, ever.

Philosophy in a Life Boat - existentialcomics.com/comic/619

So Putin reckons organ donation recipients must live long healthy lives then? We are a complex and messy biological process and every one of us will die.

“The media enabled this genocide from the start.” This piece shames us all. ‘Our ABC’ who STILL regularly seek Zionist propagandists to lie to us @albomp.bsky.social who until recently employed Israeli language to turn a blind eye. To the morally bankrupt Libs blindfolded by Zionist racism. Read it

This is really brilliant from @robin.berjon.com - explains why it’s important for Europe to do what China has done and focus much more on having an alternative to US tech. I fear few will read it. Can the sort of children who hang with politicians even read? berjon.com/digital-sove...

I think what's bothering me most about AI right now is it's a new golden hammer. Everyone wants to have projects using it so instead of combining it with other tools and libraries we are just flailing to find applications of a technology which isn't going to solve even 5% of problems.

via @robbowley.net The growing body of evidence continues to cement a picture of "A.I." code generation exacerbating the real bottlenecks in dev processes, wiping out any apparent gains at the team/org level. How much more time/£ are we gonna waste on this? www.faros.ai/blog/ai-soft...

I just saw a whole flock of birds turn all at once, what's going on, who gave the orders!?

Apropos of "if we make a chat bot big enough it will suddenly become sentient"...

The narrative shift here is quite profound, it's everywhere now

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Had 30km limit all over Spain for ages. No issue. Lives >> cars.

The evidence is clear: 20mph zones save lives and don’t slow traffic ⬇️ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Saw someone upbraiding someone else for having a hobby while the world is on fire, and, my friends: 1. The world is ever on fire, this is today's conflagration; 2. If you don't find time for rest and joy the fire will consume you; 3. Don't let people shame you for being an entire human.

Hot take, people who hate cities shouldn’t be in charge of cities

Terra Nullius by Clair Coleman is a great book. Knowing in advance that there was a twist/perspective shift I still didn't see it coming, and even though I found the ending a bit heavy handed it still hit me in the emotions like a truck. You spend the start thinking "oh it's not sci fi". But it is.

I have gone ahead and written up a more organized piece about why I think recommending decades-old genre "classics" to young people new to the space is not, shall we say, a great thing to do whatever.scalzi.com/2025/08/11/p...

Went for a run to the beach with a few thousand mates! So great how many people turn out for City to Surf.